


The Ability to Burn

by Catchclaw



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Scars, Season/Series 02, Sex and Conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 08:08:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5040703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will tells Hannibal when and where to expect him. Hannibal is willing to wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ability to Burn

Hannibal set the scene quite carefully. A balance between studied and what someone else might have taken for spontaneity. Will wouldn’t, of course. But that did not diminish Hannibal’s affection for such affectation.

It pleased him to craft the room in this way, as well as his own presence within it.

A reunion, one might call it. The end of an absence both planned for and unexpected. 

Hannibal’s scars were still fresh where they lay thick and tangled on the insides of his wrists. The swelling had faded; the pale color had returned to his flesh. But that only made the stitches more apparent, brown knots that sat up a quarter inch from his skin.

It was a testimony, he thought, to Brown’s tenacity, his single-minded (if wholly misguided) vigor; so deep had his knife driven that dissolvable thread wouldn’t do, the kind that Hannibal himself had applied to countless careless patients in overnight ERs. No, these stitches, this thread, would have to be removed by hand, plucked carefully from his arms two weeks from now. Perhaps three, depending upon how rapidly his body deigned to pull itself back together.

Still, he was fortunate. Another half-inch deeper, another knife swipe to the right, and the idiot boy could have nicked or even severed his tendons. And without his hands, his favorite instruments, where would Hannibal be? 

He checked the clock on the mantel. Three minutes past the hour, theirs. Will was balancing on the edge of being late. Nearly there. Almost rude, but not quite.

Not quite.

A note in his mailbox this morning. White paper forced into an envelope too small. Not scrawled in Will’s usual careless hand, but written deliberately, each letter precisely to form. _Hannibal_ , it said. _We have an appointment tonight. See you then_.

A threat, perhaps, a promise, less potent than the gun Will had waved at him a week ago, but one that to Hannibal felt unmistakable all the same.

 _I am coming for_ _you_ , the note meant. _And I know you will wait for me._  

Hannibal was facing the fire, leaning against the table, his back angled just so to the door. It would not do to look eager.

He shifted his legs and thought again about sitting down. No. No. Far too casual.

To stand was best, yes, although it would be better if his glass were almost full, rather than waning, better if the second movement of the _Firebird_ suite were playing, rather than the third. And better still if he were dressed properly, French cuffs and full Windsor instead of cashmere, but he had to bow to the demands of his body, to the ache that bloomed in his wrists and wound its way up his arms when he tried to tie a knot, now, or set a cufflink to rights.

And the less said about his knife skills, the better.

So. A v-neck sweater in navy. Charcoal gray slacks in wool. A blast of strings that was all wrong for the moment, one that rang with the covetous nature of the Prince’s quest for the firebird. This part of the suite had never sat well with Hannibal—to seek out was one thing, to lead a desperate search, quite another—and why, again, had he chosen it?

“Hello,” Will said, a ghost at his right hand at last. “Dr. Lecter.”

Hannibal took a breath. Did not startle. “You didn’t knock. That’s not like you.”

Will slipped around the table and came to rest at Hannibal’s side. “I wasn’t aware that I needed to. Are we on such formal terms now?”

“Formal,” Hannibal said, “is not a descriptor that I would have chosen, no.”

He tipped his head, let his mouth turn up, indulgent, but Will wasn’t looking at him. And did not, even when Hannibal turned to face him. He was dressed simply, a button-down shirt and jeans, but the shirt had been ironed, the jeans washed. Even his shoes appeared new. And if he had his glasses with him, they were concealed upon his person, rather than cluttering his face.

He was, in his own distinct way, iridescent.

“There is,” Will said finally, “a certain assumption of intimacy, I suppose, when conversing with someone whom one tried to have murdered. And subsequently threatened to kill.” He smiled, the expression carved up into shadow. “So I think it’s safe for you and me to dispense with the pretense of social graces, don’t you?”

“I’m glad to see you, Will.” It came out far more earnest than Hannibal had intended. Perhaps too close to the truth.

But if Will noticed it, this slip of the veil, he gave no sign. Instead, he laughed, a low, gutted thing. “Sure you are. ‘Cause seeing me means you’re not dead.” He twisted his neck and found Hannibal’s eyes. “And if there’s one thing you’re keen on, Doctor, we both know: it’s self-preservation.”

“Of course. As are you. As your presence in this room illustrates. As you have come here to make quite clear to me, have you not?”

Will smelled of sandalwood and cigarettes, black coffee and the ancient leather seats of his car, and for a moment, Hannibal imagined the smooth of Will’s throat under his tongue, the scent of tobacco overwhelming.

“You’re not worried that I’ll try to kill you again? You should be.”

Hannibal lifted his shoulders. “You will or you won’t. It’s as simple as that.”

Will let the possibility linger for a moment, like smoke in the sunlight, then raised his hand and brushed it away. “Do you know what’s fucked up here? I mean, the most fucked up out of all of this?”

“What is that?”

“I missed you.”

Something stirred in Hannibal’s chest, a bright crest of pleasure, a sunrise in the palm of his hand. “Well. Perhaps that is understandable. After all, desire depends upon absence. What we want is defined by what we lack.”

Will pushed away and started circling the room, not quite looking, not quite touching, but marking the space all the same. “I never took you for a Lacanian, Doctor.”

Hannibal’s mouth curled in amusement. “Regardless.”

“It doesn't follow, anyway,” Will said, drifting around the settee and back; moving, Hannibal thought, with the kind of aimlessness that could only be deliberate. “I can still want something that I already have.”

“Hmmm. But if you already possess it, how can you experience want?”

A moment, then two. Will’s palms on Hannibal’s desk, curious. “Is that a real question?”

“Of course.”

Once Will would have turned away from this, Hannibal thought, a pivot of the body or the mind. But now his eyes were steady, his hands dropping easily into his pockets. A tiger playing at housecat.

“I want,” Will said, “because what I desire is—more.”

“More of what you already have?”

Will moved towards the fire, his skin lit up like rose gold. “More. Or different. Right now, I'm not sure which.”

Hannibal wanted to reach for him, wanted to watch his newfound reserve melt in Hannibal’s hands, under his tongue. Instead, he said:

“You are uncomfortable with this subject.”

Will laughed, a sharp bark of sound echoed from the eaves. “I wasn’t aware that this discussion had a subject. I thought we were talking in the abstract.”

“And yet,” Hannibal said, “you are the one who introduced specificity. You made yourself the subject, did you not?”

Something in Will’s visage twisted, as if his shadow had shifted without his permission. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t sound like you’ve caught me at something. You haven’t. You’re not that clever.”

Hannibal lifted an eyebrow, elegant arch. _I’m not_?

Will closed the distance between them. Halted just a handbreadth away. “Desire’s different for everyone. A distinct experience. You can’t boil it down to some universal aphorism.”

His curls were slicked back, held away from his forehead. Perhaps that was why he seemed like a needle, his eyes the honed shine of a blade. Why he was radiating more heat than the fire at Hannibal’s back.

“No,” Hannibal said. “You cannot. But the practice of psychiatry requires one to embrace some sense of continuity in human experience. In order to unlock an individual’s mind, we must assume that though the keys may vary, the locks themselves, at least, are of the same ilk. And surely, the experience of desire, no matter its subject or object, lies at the root of who we are. All of us."         

“Including you, Dr. Lecter?” His voice teasing. A hint of shattered glass.

“And you, Will.”

Will took his hand. The touch was a shock, the casual assumption that Hannibal would allow it even more so. “I wanted you,” Will said, “to be dead.”

“Yes.”

Will tipped Hannibal’s fingers, bared his wrist. “I wanted to be alive and know that you weren’t.” He caught Hannibal’s cuff and slid it back, just a touch; just enough, Hannibal thought, to see his assassin’s handiwork unobstructed.

“You wanted to fashion my absence. To alter your life by extinguishing mine.”

“No,” Will said. “I wanted you—different.” A smile, one that caught in Hannibal’s teeth. “You don’t sit easily in my life. Hell, you tried your damndest to destroy it, didn’t you?”

“I did not see my actions as destructive. But there is little point in denying that their consequences were.”

“Understatement.”

“Perhaps.”

“What did you want?” He drew Hannibal’s wrist up, dipped his head to study the mark. “Aside from putting the Chesapeake Ripper to rest. What did you think framing me would accomplish, exactly?”

Hannibal found himself suspended, a man on a high wire, watching Will touch him. Feeling Will’s breath on his skin. “I wanted to see what would happen. How you would react to your mind turning against you and to the world following suit.”

Will lifted his eyes, their fingers, his face. “Oh.”

“What I did not anticipate, however, were my own reactions to your decline, or—”

The thought pulled taught, threatened to break, because Will’s tongue was on Hannibal’s flesh, weaving in and out of the threads that held him together. A slice of wet and heat.

Hannibal’s body arched, unbidden, and he curled his free hand around the edge of the table. Made himself still. “Or,” he said again, steady, “that I would react at all. It pained me to see you caged. No matter how convenient your confinement may have been for my purposes.” 

Will snorted, the sound hot in Hannibal’s palm. “I’m glad it was convenient for someone. Because it nearly killed me.”

“Yes.”

“And you. It almost killed you, too. Even before that kid got his knife in you. Didn’t it?” He closed his teeth around the ladder before Hannibal could answer and tugged, hard enough that Hannibal felt the wire strain. Hard enough to hurt.

It was exquisite.

Hannibal’s breath, a catch. “Will—”

Will looked up, leaned in, like a comet in one’s kitchen window. “You’re wrong about desire, Doctor. It doesn’t require absence. If anything, the presence of what you want feeds it. Makes you want different. Makes you want more.”

His hands fell to Hannibal’s hips and turned in, and Hannibal was hard, oh, his cock already anxious in well-tailored wool. Will’s fingers on him rubbing, knowing. “Did you want me like this before you sent me away?” Will said, soft and sharp. “Or after? Did you get hard for me when I was still in your life, or only after I was gone?”

Hannibal clutched at Will’s shoulders, drawn by the light that drove out of Will’s eyes, by the saber-tipped sparks that flew between them, threatened to catch. “Both,” he said, somehow. “But different. Before I would have had you changed. Now I want you as you are.”

“As you’ve made me.” His voice, his hands, casual, as if he opened Hannibal’s trousers every day.

“As we have made ourselves, together. Desire does not exist in a vacuum. What we want shapes us, and our wanting shapes that which we desire in turn.”

Will’s fingers found Hannibal’s cock. “Desire,” he said, “requires reciprocity.”

Hannibal shivered. Turned his nails through Will’s hair and did it again as Will stroked him, his grip firm and sure. “I thought we had rejected universals.”

“It’s not meant to be one. I meant between you and me.”

“Ah,” Hannibal said, as if it were a word and not a well-formed gasp. “I would not want you if you did not want me. And vice versa.”

“Something like that.”

His eyes were on Hannibal steady, studying, cataloguing every twitch of Hannibal’s mouth, every sigh, and part of Hannibal wanted to give in, to erase the pretense of conversation and give himself over entirely to whatever song Will wanted to play on his body, to string out over his skin. But part of him feared that this occasion would be the only one afforded him, the sole opportunity he’d have to see Will in this way, to have Will touch him like this, with an unabashed sense of possession. As if it were his right.

So Hannibal clung to it, the loss that was to come, in order to keep it at bay. He gritted his teeth and made the words come.

“It begs the question of origin, though, does it not?” he said. “In whom does the original spark lie? You or I?”

Will’s free hand was on his hip, his fingertips locked in Hannibal’s belt. Holding him still. “When a match touches kindling, we don’t wonder in which lies the ability to burn. On its own, the match will exhaust itself.”

“And alone, the wood cannot catch.”

“Right,” Will said, his mouth suddenly a brush from Hannibal’s own, his wrist twisting, his thumb pressing under the head of Hannibal’s cock. “You have to have both to make fire.”

Hannibal groaned, the sound a strange thing in his throat, and strained for a kiss, even as he knew it was folly. Will laughed at him, a flutter of heat, and his lips danced away, sketching his amusement into Hannibal’s cheek.

“Wood. And matches. You. And me.” He did something delicious with his fingers over Hannibal’s foreskin, under it, and Hannibal’s hips jerked, began to move of their own accord, silver shavings drawn to the magnet of Will’s fist. And yet.

“An apt metaphor, perhaps,” he managed, “given that fire destroys that which creates it.”

Will’s mouth on his throat. “Would you destroy me, Dr. Lecter?”

“No. But I suspect that choice is no longer mine to make. Would you destroy yourself, Will, and me in the process?”

Will made a beautiful sound, wanton and soft. “You’re wrong, you know. They aren’t destroyed. The match and the kindling. They’re transformed. Made something new by the flames.”

“Into ash. Something most would regard as a reduction. Something less than they once were.”

“They’re made indistinguishable from each other. Are they less together than they were apart?”

He had Hannibal pinned, trapped under a magnifying glass like ones of his flies. Picking him apart, Hannibal thought, stroke by incandescent stroke. Cataloguing the scraps, the debris, the thousands of mismatched pieces from which Hannibal was made, and it should have alarmed him, how willing he was to let it happen, how much he wanted Will to see.

Sweat curled down Hannibal’s forehead, tumbled over his spine, and for the first time in a lifetime, he wanted more than he could bear.

Will must have sensed it, somehow, for he nipped at Hannibal’s mouth and quickened his wrist.

Hannibal’s head snapped back. “Will—“ he said again, ancient ache.

“I’m not myself with you,” Will said. “You’ve made me into something more. Something different. You’ve taken me and stretched what was there, the raw elements, and created someone new.”

“Someone new. But still you.”

“Yes.” Will’s voice in his ear, triumphant. “And I have done the same to you.”

A thrush flew from Hannibal’s mouth, a wing of sound that swept up the walls, to the ceiling, and back. For a long, seamless breath, he knew only beauty: in the night, surrounded by fireflies. In Florence, walking cobblestones warmed by the sun. In his kitchen, twisting tartare into roses. In a cornfield, watching Cassie Boyle’s blood pour into the dirt, thinking: _Look what I have made for you_. And he was in Will’s arms, spending himself like a boy, loud and blind over Will’s fist.

He turned his head and found Will’s mouth was there to catch him as he fell.

Will hummed, sent the sound in shivers over Hannibal’s lips. “Good. That’s so good, isn’t it?”

Banalities, Hannibal thought, somewhere, but the rest of him was pleased. Warmed by the sentiment, however simple. “Yes.”

They kissed again, like summer, lingering gold that bloomed in Hannibal’s mouth, tended by Will’s tongue.

“Touch me,” Will said. He let Hannibal lick the words away, molten and sweet, then snatched at Hannibal’s hands and pressed them to his body. Held them there and rocked into Hannibal’s palm. “Take it out. Put your hands on me.”

Hannibal ducked out of his grasp and turned them, pressed Will against the edge of the table and sank to his knees.

“My hands are not as nimble as they might be,” he said. “Let me give you my mouth instead.”

“Oh, god,” Will said. “Hannibal, you’re—“ He opened his jeans with one hand, reached for Hannibal with the other. “Come on. Fuck.”

In this moment, Hannibal thought, Will did not want to be savored, did not want Hannibal to linger over him and spin the pleasure from his body, note by note. No, Will wanted to know he was desired, that Hannibal wanted this more, this different, just as he did, and that, oh that. Was something Hannibal was happy to give.

He took Will on his tongue, through his lips, and the look on Will’s face, the feel of his fingers on Hannibal’s cheek, let something blossom in Hannibal’s heart, a rush of color and life that made the rest of the world seem so very gray.

 _I want you_ , Hannibal tried to say with his eyes, the ready suck of his mouth. _You are all I will ever want. And that I will never be ready to lose._

It did not take so very much to draw Will close, to have his hips trembling under Hannibal’s palms, to muddy his breath, and when he came, beautiful discordant, Will sang, his voice washing over Stravinsky.

He drew Hannibal to his feet, sounds of pleasure still thick in his throat.

“I’ve missed you,” he said again, this new Will, this quicksilver creature, this firebird who glowed in the dark of a dull, sullen world, whose presence chased the shadows from Hannibal’s life and in their wake left only beauty.

Hannibal kissed his neck. Sandalwood and sweat. “You need never do so again.”

Will’s nails in his back. “I haven’t forgotten what you are. What you did. Any of it.”

“I would not ask you to. Nor would I expect it. And yet, here you are.”

Will raised his head. Drew his fingers over Hannibal’s mouth. “And yet,” Will echoed. “Here we are.”

Later, with Will above him in the dark, Hannibal said: “I adore you.”

Will dipped his head and he fucked in again, harder this time. “Yeah,” he murmured over Hannibal’s mouth. “You do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers to abrae for the last minute look-see.


End file.
